3 Self Defense Assumptions (Part 2)
Gershon Ben Keren : 21/09/2007The second assumption I always make is that my attacker/aggressor has a superior weapon to me i.e. he/she/they are armed. This assumption reflects not just how I deal with an aggressor pre-fight but also how I deal with them once the fight has started.
Imagine you are facing someone and you know 100% that they don’t have a knife. Suddenly every technique you know is open to you. Now imagine you are facing someone who you know 100% does have a knife and consider how the techniques that were available to you before stand up. Now consider the person is at least as good a fighter as you. How many (if any) techniques do you have left?
There is a simple rule that needs to be adhered to when dealing with someone who has a knife and that’s to create/maintain distance. You do not want to get into a grappling/clinch situation and you do not want to end up on the ground however good your skills in this environment are. All is not lost if this is what happens but the game has just become a lot more difficult and deadly.
Techniques that are complex or have several stages to them need to be forgotten. Each stage in a technique opens up the opportunity for failure. Often where a knife or weapon is absent, these possibilities can be managed or readjusted to i.e. if something goes wrong I might end up putting myself in a position where the person can strike me but without any power, if they’re unarmed I can handle this, if they have an edged weapon I can’t: if they can reach me, they can stab me, which means they can kill me.
Think about the techniques you would normally use to deal with an attacker, think what danger they put you in should your aggressor pull a knife. Think what techniques you know could work against a knife and think through the stages of the technique and where things could go wrong; then consider how much further they could go wrong.
This in truth rules out many of the control and restraint/knife disarm techniques that are taught i.e. they comprise of several stages to them and put the defender in compromising positions should they go wrong. This is not to say they shouldn’t be learnt, there is a time and place for them but that needs to be recognised and understood. Generally for civilians this should be where the attacker is in the home and there are third-parties such as a partner and/or children that need protecting, otherwise the strategy should be to create as much distance between yourself and the attacker as possible i.e. run.
Maybe not the actions of a ‘hero’ but certainly the ones of a survivor and remember, heroes can die but survivors can’t. It is also important to remember that from a stress and fear perspective any sort of weapon present in a confrontation will cause these to rocket. The likelihood of successfully completing relatively complex techniques when under this level of stress is reduced considerably. Simple techniques with quick disengagements are the order of the day.
Also, if I assume my attacker is armed – even if they’re not showing me a weapon – I become more reluctant to fight/engage with them. This is a healthy attitude to have. One mistake when dealing with a knife or gun can be fatal. A knife literally just has to touch you and it could be game over.
Is the assumption realistic or just paranoia?
Even is we accept that dealing with an armed opponent is a touch and go affair and should be dealt with by the use of distance and simple techniques, is it realistic to assume that every aggressor, could be carrying a knife?
Knife carrying is certainly becoming a trend amongst UK teenagers. A study by Glasgow University (actually looking at drug misuse) discovered that a third of Scottish boys aged between 11 and 16 had admitted to carrying an offensive weapon at some point. London’s Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) following a study of Home Office data concluded that on average 175 people a day are mugged at knife point. CCJS deputy director Enver Soloman stated: “There is no doubt there are more kids carrying knives.”
The problem with the statistics on knife carrying is that they tend to be aimed at either particular ethnic or socio-economic or demographic groups. The only other source is from recorded criminal activity. The bottom line to me is that knife carrying is prevalent enough that it should be assumed that an aggressor is armed. In the UK Gun crime and gun carrying tends to be, though not exclusively, linked to gang violence. Even so my assumption should still be that my aggressor is carrying a weapon of some sort.
The problem with weapon carrying is that even if the individual intends it only to be used for self-defence they may force themselves in to using it. Take a situation where they posture themselves aggressively and instead of backing down, their target starts to posture back; neither one will back down and both will start to up the ante in terms of threats and aggressive behaviour till a fight starts. At this point a person carrying a knife for self-defence will need to make the decision that the situation may warrant its use. More than likely, especially if they are being subjected to pain of any sort, they will pull the knife.
They may pull the knife before the situation turns physical in an attempt to dissuade the person they are dealing with from going any further. At this point they have left them self no opportunity to back down they can only head in one direction: towards violence. If the person they are dealing with does not back down then the knife will be used.
When you see a knife you have to assume the person is prepared to use it even if it is just being used in a threatening manner. It may be that if someone demands my wallet at knifepoint and I give it then the knife will not be used but I should assume that even compliance could result in the aggressor using the weapon.
Taking a step back from this. If I assume that an attacker who has a knife will use it and I assume that any aggressor is carrying a knife I must accept that any violent confrontation is potentially life threatening. In such situations I don’t want to take any chances with any dubious techniques and I want to make sure I’m committed in my execution of anything I choose to do.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
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3 Self Defense Assumptions (Part 1)
Gershon Ben Keren : 18/09/2007When teaching self-defence I refer back a lot to three assumptions I make when facing a potentially violent situation or aggressor. These are:
In the next set of posts, I want to consider these further i.e. what they mean, what there implications are etcetera, etcetera.
My Aggressor(s) Is At Least As Competent A Fighter As I Am
Many people who take self-defence/martial arts classes gain the impression that they technically know what to do in a fight: they’ve practised and rehearsed techniques and are able to deal with any ‘move’ an attacker can throw at them. They make the assumption that they have superior knowledge and technical ability to that of their attacker/aggressor.
Firstly it must be appreciated that what can be done in the training hall can’t always be done on the street. This is not to say given the correct/right conditions a spinning, reverse back kick won’t work on the street but think of the conditions needed to get it to work e.g. if you’re in a crowded bar with someone right up in your face are these really the right conditions for it to work? Will your fancy lapel grab/collar release lock work when the person is violently shaking you and putting you off balance? Can you throw your devastating low roundhouse on a moving subway car, whilst maintaining your balance? Etcetera, etcetera.
Remember the environment and situation can reduce your technical ability. There are probably many UFC/MMA/Cage fighters who have cursed the fact of having their back up against the cage wall or ring. If only it wasn’t there they’d have been able to do move X, Y or Z. The environments in which you fight will restrict/reduce/lower your technical ability. If your technical ability is lowered then that of your aggressors is effectively raised.
There’s a strong case here for training in ‘real life’ environments e.g. with obstacles on the floor, in confined places etcetera, etcetera. There’s also the case of training with realistic attackers/aggressors, who scream and shout, push and shove etc.
See how technically competent you are, when defending yourself in a phone box, on a stairwell, when sitting down etc.
An aggressor might not know that you’re trained but he or she will naturally try and control the environment in which they make their attack. They will do this to limit any chance you have of fighting back or running away.
Assuming superior technical ability also means that many of the factors that actually decide a fight are ignored. If I assume that the person I am facing is actually better than me as a fighter it means I need to find ways to create an advantage over them. Focussing on these things will give whatever technical ability I have an edge. If I can create an element of surprise and/or behave more aggressively than my attacker etc, I can start to match/exceed my aggressor in other areas rather than just in technical ability.
It is rarely technical ability alone that decides the outcome of a street fight; aggression and surprise are normally the key factors. If I can leverage these to play in my favour I increase my chances of survival significantly.
What if I make the assumption and it proves false?
I don’t want to have to pitch my ability to block a punch against my aggressor’s ability to successfully throw one. The odds always have to be with the offensive technique succeeding, not with the defensive technique succeeding. Blocking punches is like trying to save penalties in football/soccer all the initiative is with the person shooting at the target. Trying to block a punch etc is a reaction or response; it’s the second movement rather than the first and it has to deal with more force than it can generate itself. Also, punches are rarely thrown singularly; they normally come in pairs or combinations. The technical ability of an attacker does not have to be significant to counter the technical ability of a person trying to defend him or herself.
An aggressor’s technical ability can be relatively low to overcome a defenders higher technical ability. Dealing with a fast, hard punch when surprised and under stress is a real test of ‘technical’ ability, not what can be dealt with and countered when sparring in the training hall.
The opportunities to succeed in these situations need to be created rather than ignored in favour of reliance on technical expertise.
I must also not underestimate my aggressors intention to do me harm and believe that he/she is committed to the task of causing me maximum damage. I cannot assume that they will be content to land a few blows and walk off. I cannot assume that they will only cause me minimal harm during the period that their anger/aggression lasts. Often I am not aware of what has motivated them to attack and so my intention should be to make them stop rather than allowing them to stop of their own accord i.e. something which is outside of my control.
An aggressor only needs to be committed and competent in a few techniques e.g. big overhand right, rear strangle etc to produce an attack that puts a technically adequate defence into the shade. We like to think that superior technical ability is what gives us the edge and that a technical/educated fighter will beat one who is just relying on instinct. Instinct can produce a fighter who is better than his/her technically able counterpart.
It must be assumed that the aggressor who is facing you is at least as good as you, to prevent you turning a survival situation into a contest of athletic and technical prowess. Assume your attacker is at least as fast as you, at least as strong, at least as committed, at least as technically able. Now decide how you can go about beating them. Think what prevents you executing techniques in training and start to utilise those things against your aggressor. Do you react well when surprised? How well do you cope when someone throws multiple, fast hand strikes towards your face? Do you cope well when unbalanced? Etc.
Don’t think first about what techniques work well for you (remember the person you face is equally as good as you), instead think about what stops you from defending techniques and start creating an environment that includes these things, for your attacker. Then start thinking about what techniques are easy to do with a high success rate. Then think about the soft, easy, accessible and high impact targets that are presented to you e.g. groin, eyes, throat etc. Now, put it all together. This is how you survive in a fight against someone who is as good as you.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
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Sparring & Self Defense
Gershon Ben Keren : 14/09/2007One of the most asked questions I get from people enquiring about my self-defense classes is, 'do you do sparring?'
It's a strange fixation that the novice student has when it comes to sparring: some think that without it training lacks reality and others are relieved if they find a class where it isn't practised.
The popular definition/view of sparring is that of two people padded up to some degree, facing each other off, with the intention of punching and kicking each other to practice and test their abilities of combat and fighting. Depending on the type of gloves worn there maybe an element of grappling and groundwork thrown in.
For certain sports martial art sparring is obviously necessary, as it closely resembles the format of an actual competition e.g. sparring in Kick Boxing/Thai Boxing closely resembles a competitive bout. In short it is a realistic practice for the real thing. The question for self defense training is, 'is sparring a realistic practice for a street fight?'
To answer this question we must look at the format sparring takes and compare it with the format of a street fight, considering if 'best practices' is sparring are actually 'worst practices' on the street. If sparring teaches bad self-defense habits then it's place in reality based self defense training has to be seriously questioned or at least the benefits it adds to training weighed up against the potential bad habits it creates.
In a typical sparring practice: both participants are prepared, they know a period of combat is about to commence; they both know at what time the 'fight' will start e.g. they will touch gloves, someone will shout 'go' etc; they also probably have a good idea of the ability of the person they are facing and it is worth noting that both participants are 'trained' (they have an idea of how to fight); also both participants know the 'format' of the fight e.g. they know they will be facing one opponent, they know their opponent won't be carrying a knife etc.
These are key elements of sparring, which make it differ from a street fight. In a street fight, it is not always obvious that a period of combat is about to commence. Many fights start 'unexpectedly', during an aggressive conversation, where an attacker gives little or no warning that they are about to launch an assault. In a street fight, one person is prepared for the fight – the one ready to start it – the other may have no idea that a fight is going to take place. Also, the types of attacks that will be faced are not those of a trained person: trained people rarely throw big looping punches, which are the stock-in-trade of your average street fighter.
Importantly, the format of a street fight is different to that of sparring. In sparring there are set rules concerning no kicks to the groin, no head butts, no strikes to they eyes etc. However these are the very weapons that stand the best chance of ending the fight.
Also a street fight may have many 'dimensions' to it: punches might be throw, participants may grapple, one may pull a knife, both may go to ground, a third person might join in etcetera, etcetera. Few street fights remain a stand up affair with both parties exchanging punches. If the size of combatants is disproportionate i.e. one is significantly smaller than the other, then the fight progressing as a stand up fight is even less likely
One of the main differences between sparring and self-defense are the tactics that are used in the different environments. Sparring is about winning, street self-defense is about surviving. In sparring both participants are encouraged to engage and stay engaged with their opponent – success being measured in the amount/quantity and force of the blows landed (compared with those taken). On the street the strategy should be one of quick disengagement: the focus should not be on the punishment of the attacker it should be on the control of the situation. Control of the situation, should mean controlling all possibilities in the environment i.e. the potential for multiple attackers, the potential for a weapon to be involved etc. This control means that it’s impossible to engage/focus solely on the attacker there needs to be periods of disengagement to check surroundings etc and eventually make an escape. This is contrary to what sparring encourages.
So what are the benefits of sparring for self-defense?
Sparring teaches two important things: pain management and aggression/determination (fitness is a good third reason).
If you’ve never been hit, you’ll be surprised at your reaction when you are, especially when you’re hit hard. Without stating the obvious, it hurts. If you believe that you won’t take a punch/strike on the street then your naive. If you talk to anyone who’s actually been involved in a street-fight, they will tell you that they got hit. It’s unrealistic to think that you will block every punch/kick thrown or avoid them totally. The chances are you’ll be hit. If you’re used to getting hit then you’ll be better at knowing how to control/manage that pain. This isn’t a case of ‘toughening’ yourself up, it’s a case of learning to recognise what the pain feels like and work through it (the aggression/determination part).
Sparring is perfect for learning this component of self-defense and learning it in a dynamic environment. It doesn’t however teach pain management when you’re surprised. When sparring, you know you are going to be hit at some point and you can focus on managing that pain. When surprised, pain management is different. Stub your bare toe on a step when carrying a cup of coffee upstairs at home and you’ll know how extreme the pain feels. Compare it to getting hit in sparring. The pain from sparring doesn’t come close. This is why being hit when surprised is both a devastating tactic to use in self-defense and something to avoid happening to your self. Many street fights are effectively finished after the first punch, not due to the actual pain but the pain generated by the element of surprise.
So sparring does have benefits however in my view from a self-defense point of view it encourages bad habits. This doesn’t mean it can’t be modified from its traditional form or that its benefits can’t be gained from other training methods. However it certainly isn’t the ‘ultimate’ way to replicate the realism of a street fight. The benefits it brings however must be trained and drilled rather than being ignored - not sparring should not mean opting for a soft option in training.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
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Emotional Honesty In The Face Of Violence
Gershon Ben Keren : 11/09/2007One of the biggest misconceptions individuals have about learning self defense/martial arts, is that after a few lessons they will undergo a major metamorphosis, changing as a person from one who was once nervous or scared of violence to one who is able to meet it head on with their fear held in check. Many instructors and systems are guilty of perpetuating this myth by implying it in their advertising with statements such as, ‘no longer walk the streets in fear’, ‘subdue larger opponents with these simple techniques’, etcetera, etcetera.
Martial arts and self-defense training will change an individual’s attitude towards violence (not always in a positive way) however it will not transform their personality overnight. I have had students who were bullied etc, improving their self-confidence and ability to defend themselves however at heart they are still the same individuals. They still have confidence problems etc, these haven’t gone away, they’ve just learnt to overcome them or gain a greater understanding of what they are capable of doing, which enables them to respond to situations in a more positive manner. Their basic personality hasn’t changed. Who they are is still the same they’re just able to look at themselves in a different way and from a different angle and ‘force’ themselves to act differently to how they would normally. This is what gives them the confidence to defend themselves.
As a culture we have been bowled over by the Hollywood vision of the martial arts, which takes an ordinary person who is scared of their own shadow and turns them into an accomplished fighter that takes on a never-ending stream of skilled fighters (and wins) in the final scene. If we’re all honest, we want a bit of that for ourselves. This is why Hollywood makes films about such individuals and their experiences. We all want to find the thing, which will empower us to change that which we are.
None of us want to be scared, none of us want to be dominated by others, none of us want to let injustices go unpunished and the martial arts, we believe will change us into these noble warriors who are able to prevent the wrongs of this world being visited upon us.
All too often we have a clinical/sterile and simple view of violence, believing that our attitude towards it can be changed as easily as our attitude towards a different brand of food, TV program etc. Anyone who has had to face a violent individual will know that his or her emotional response could not be described as indifferent. We respond to violence with extreme emotions. To re-educate these emotions would mean changing an entire personality. This is not going to happen by turning up at a martial arts class twice a week. Any instructor who suggests that they can change your emotional response to violence within a short time and with just a few lessons is a liar. What can be trained however is how you cope with this emotional response.
N.B. through continuous exposure to violence, or replications of violence it is possible to re-educate the emotional response however this takes a lot of effort and dedication, which is beyond most people especially if they have other commitments in their life, such as work and family.
Accepting what your natural emotional response to violence and violent behaviour is key to learning how to cope, manage and use these emotions in order that you defend yourself successfully.
Many people (mostly men) are not honest in assessing their emotional response to violence.
A lot of people like to think what their emotional response is i.e. that they’ll be ready to fight, in fact itching/excited to fight. I know very few people like this. People who respond to violence in this manner are ‘natural fighters’ and to be honest few of them practice self-defense or martial arts – they don’t need to. I’m not one of them, my reaction when facing a violent situation is that I’d rather be anywhere else but there. The prospect of a fight doesn’t excite me in fact I get apprehensive when realising I may have to defend myself. Many people however don’t want to admit this to themselves, as if expressing doubt about their ability to manage violence is a weakness.
These individuals never learn to cope with their emotions as they deny they have any or imagine that they have or will have different ones when confronted by violence. Understanding how you feel and what your initial thoughts are when confronting a violent individual(s) is necessary in order to learn the correct coping mechanisms.
Imagine facing a 220 lb giant, with massive arms who has his face in yours and is angry beyond any measure you’ve seen before. You can smell his sweat, the alcohol on his breath and you feel his spit on your face as he starts to tell you what he’s going to do to you. You’re on your own in an unfamiliar and deserted part of town and it’s dark. You know that you’re not going to be able to talk your way out and you know your aggressor is only going to be happy when he’s beaten you to a pulp and raped you (applies to men as well as women) till you’re unconscious.
How do you feel? Exhilarated by the prospect of the fight? Scared and wishing you didn’t have to fight but knowing you have no alternative/are resigned to it? Scared, confused and resigned to the fact that the inevitable is going to happen to you, whatever you do?
Be honest with yourself, there is no right answer – don’t think about how you’d like to respond e.g. if you’d like to think you’d be resigned to fight but in fact your over riding emotion of confusion and fear means that you would rather do anything else i.e. comply, then admit it to yourself. You will feel how you feel and think how you think. It will take a lot and I mean a lot of training for you to re-train your emotional response to such a situation however it is more than possible to develop a proper coping mechanism that will allow you to act and deal with the situation positively.
If you are a ‘trained’ martial artist do you think you’ll be able to manage/cope with the situation? Do you think your fight strategy will work? Do you think your techniques are adequate to deal with this aggressor?
Again, be honest. Have you total confidence that your punches are powerful enough, that your strikes will work? What strategy have you been taught to deal with this situation and will it work? Remember this isn’t the dojo/training hall and you’re not facing an opponent, who is like yourself i.e. reasonable, interested in defending themselves etc. You’re facing someone whose only desire is to see you totally dominated, who is not going to give you the opportunities to apply your fancy arm-locks, or give you the space to do your spinning back kick that works well in sparring etc, they just want to see/hear you scream in pain. How do you feel facing them? Be honest.
Knowing what your fears are and how you feel will allow you to learn to cope and it is only through coping that you will be able to act.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
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Anger & Aggression
Gershon Ben Keren : 10/09/2007There is a big difference between anger and aggression. Both have their place in a violent confrontation but not confusing the different roles they play is very important for someone wanting to have control over the situation (from start to finish).
Pure distilled anger can be extremely powerful: fear goes and power increases. One just has to look at the mother called upon to defend her child to see the amount of energy that one person can release when angry. Many muggers/predators etc have felt and been deterred by the actions of an angry mother. I have had to defend myself against individuals so enraged that they have been almost oblivious to any pain inflicted on them: things that I would have expected to stop someone in their tracks simply failed to work (this does call into question systems that rely solely on inflicting damage and pain as a means of defense).
I would also guess, that everybody has felt angry to the point where they have felt near invincible.
Certainly, anger can bring some positive elements to personal self-defense. Anger is the fuel that most aggressors use to power their actions and so in some way it makes sense for us to use this same energy as well. However it is worth considering the behaviour of a person that is fuelled by anger and look to see if this state is totally beneficial for an individual looking to protect them self.
There is no doubt that an angry person is 100% committed to their cause. If someone is so engulfed by rage then their focus is totally directed at the object of their anger. There are no questions in their mind about what they are doing or about to do, the path is a simple and straight one. Anyone, looking to defend him or herself needs total commitment to their cause, their actions need to be executed with total belief in what they are doing with all doubts excluded. The angry person is certainly in no doubt about what they are doing; the problem is they have sacrificed a large part if not all of their control to get to this state.
For an untrained person who has no plan or is not aware of all the alternatives that a situation can offer, it is worth them giving them self up to anger. It represents their best chance of surviving the situation. However it is not without its dangers. The most prominent one being that anger has no internal control to stop. A person who is angry is like a driver of a car, who has filled the petrol tank to full, removed the brake pedal and steering wheel and put their foot down full on the accelerator: the car will run at full speed until either the road runs out or the tank runs dry. In a violent encounter, an angry person will go at full speed for as long as the object of their rage remains or until they become exhausted, which ever comes first.
It’s an effective tactic for the untrained person: they don’t have to think about what they’re doing e.g. their own internal fear and for a period of time they won’t feel any pain. This is why many aggressor who ‘look for a fight’, make themselves angry before they attack, that is they’ll perceive/create an injustice and then engage their ‘victim’ in some form of argument. Anger takes the thought out of the fight.
For someone trying to defend them self, becoming angry has some negative aspects.
Anger creates tunnel vision and tunnel vision restricts situational awareness. The fact that an angry person is so committed to the object of their rage means that they have restricted their awareness of other things that are happening in their vicinity: they may not see (or see to late), third parties that are coming to join in the fight, they may not see the person they are focussing on pull a knife due to the fact that they are so caught up in what they’re doing i.e. punishing or thinking of punishing their target.
The extreme focus of punishing a person as an outlet/expression of anger means that a person may not recognise the best opportunity in which to disengage from the person they are fighting with. An angry fighter may totally overwhelm their opponent and ‘finish’ the fight before exhaustion sets in or they may continue the fight to a point where their opponent realises/starts to fight back. Running till the tank is empty is a characteristic of people who are fuelled by anger and it has to be remembered that the other person may not tire as quick or be totally subdued. Anger, will prevent an individual recognising when they should disengage with their attacker so the fight doesn’t last longer than it needs to. Everyone knows that anger clouds judgement.
Anger isn’t something that just turns up when the physical confrontation starts, it is something that is present before hand during the early stage of a violent encounter. These are the stages where it may be possible to diffuse/de-escalate the situation verbally and find a peaceful resolution. Anger clouds judgement at this stage, propelling an individual towards a fight that may be easily avoided.
For the trained person, who has some technical skill, anger reduces physical actions to the most primordial. Skilled fighters, who become controlled by anger, forget everything they have learnt and usually end up throwing schoolyard techniques. Some of these techniques may be quite effective however they have a greater return when they are executed as controlled techniques.
So what part does/should anger play, from the perspective of people looking to defend themselves?
Anger, should be a fight motivator, not a fight controller. Stress and anger, block and fill the neural pathways that the brain uses to transmit thoughts and actions. It is why angry people are very difficult to reason with. There is too much traffic, too many thoughts travelling around to allow room for any more ideas to be received and processed. Anger can give us a reason to fight/defend ourselves but it shouldn’t tell us how to go about doing this. If all I can think about is punishing the person standing before me, I’m not allowing information about the situation to be processed e.g. I don’t notice them or register the importance of them reaching into their pocket, I don’t notice/register the importance of their friends coming over from the bar etcetera, etcetera.
However, I don’t want to be clinical, this isn’t a lesson in Zen Buddhism that I’m about to receive, it’s a potential beating. Yes, I can/should be angry at the situation and the person(s) but I’m not going to be consumed by it. To me the person who stands before me wanting to fight is wanting to take away from me everyone and everything I love: they don’t care for me, those I care for and those who care for me. At that moment in time they don’t care if I live or die, that’s the value they place on me, that’s how important my life is to them. This is what I assume. It may seem a touch melodramatic but I can’t afford to assume otherwise. I don’t know how my aggressor will react to me fighting back, I have to assume that they’ll be prepared to fight me till I can’t continue, regardless of the state I’ll be left in. Does this make me angry? Yes it does, very angry. I’m very motivated to fight if it comes down to it.
People always make assumptions about violence but the one assumption they find hard to countenance is that they could be killed or seriously injured during a fight. They somehow place their own attitude (the one they possess when they’re not subject to the stress of an actual fight) on to that of their aggressor i.e. once they’ve done enough to deal with their aggressor they’ll stop. Fights don’t work like this. Not everybody thinks the same, not everybody reacts the same and during a fight sanity and reason fly out of the window. Remember the time you felt anger to a level that made you feel invincible, now imagine releasing all of that on another person. When would you stop? Would you be able to stop?
Think about the threat that parents used to make to their children: I’ll beat you to within an inch of your life. Could someone really have the control beat you that far (to within inch) and then stop? I know I’m being facetious however the point has to be made. People lose control when they’re angry they lose control when they fight. When reason has left the building there can be no assumptions.
One of the things that must be accepted when facing a fight is that it could be fatal. Rather than let this scare you, it should make you angry and motivate you to be 100% committed in your response to the situation.
I need though to make sure that this anger doesn’t engulf me. I still need to stick to my plan: to deal with my aggressor(s) in the shortest possible time, dealing with them till they no longer represent a threat but no longer. I don’t want my anger to cause me to stay inflicting punishment, whilst I ignore other potential dangers. My attitude is to defend myself not see that justice is done.
This way I get the full energy of my anger, with the clarity of judgement. This is how anger is turned into aggression.
Aggression in self defense speak should be interpreted as a direct and determined approach, using whatever hostile means necessary to achieve a specific goal i.e. personal survival. The difference between this and anger is that there is clarity and intention involved, which means that all actions are controlled and calculated. The driving ‘passion’ behind them is every bit as intense as the ferocity that an angry person experiences however they are in control directing this force. The steering wheel and the brakes have been reintroduced to the car.
Clarity and intention, with the emotional content of anger leads to aggression.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
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Self Defense Practitioner's & The UFC
Gershon Ben Keren : 07/09/2007Tomorrow night UFC 75 comes to London (the city where I live). For those who don’t know, the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is a no-holds barred contest that pits two fighters against each other in an Octagonal cage, fighting under minimal rules. The original championships saw different martial artists of different styles competing to demonstrate not only who the best fighter was, but also which system was the best martial art.
As fighters tried to put their systems to the ‘ultimate test’, many were seen to be ineffectual or have gaping holes in their arsenal/syllabus e.g. the lack of groundwork being the most evident in many of the traditional styles.
Due to natural evolution, fighters began to understand what did and didn’t work and ‘new’ hybrid styles of fighting developed. These systems became more uniform and what became distinctive were the fighter’s style rather than the style of the systems they used. Basically an efficient and effective way of fighting in this environment was created. Such is the case, that you no longer see traditional martial artists e.g. karate, kung fu practitioners etc competing in these competitions. They are totally dominated by these hybrid or mixed martial arts (mma) fighters.
The idea behind these no-holds barred fights is to try and find out, which fighter would win in a near-to-as-real street fight. For safety, decency and to make the fight last longer (for entertainment purposes), certain techniques were barred e.g. biting, eye gouging etc. However apart from these almost anything goes.
As these contests became more popular questions/challenges were thrown out to the reality-based martial artists and self-defense practitioners, to come and test their abilities. Systems that claimed they were the ultimate system for street self-defense were asked to put their money where their mouth is and send a representative(s) to compete.
The system that was continually asked to put itself to the test was Krav Maga: the hand-to-hand combat system of the Israeli Military, which is now practised by many civilians. (I myself practice the Krav Maga system that is used by the Israeli Special Forces i.e. Commando Krav Maga). Many Krav Maga students claim that their system is the ultimate fighting system for the street, so the question that has to be asked is, ‘would/could a Krav Maga practitioner ever win the UFC, using Krav Maga techniques?’
The answer that 99% of Krav Maga students give is ‘no’ for the following reason: the techniques that most Krav Maga systems rely on our banned in the UFC and so they would be put at an unfair advantage. Whilst this is true to some degree it hides the real reason, why reality based martial artists would fail in these types of competitions. I believe that even if an MMA fighter agreed to compete, allowing their opponent to do groin strikes, eye strikes and biting etc, they would still win.
The UFC differs from a street fight in many more ways than just the techniques that are and aren’t allowed. I’m not saying that MMA fighters are not good street fighters, the point I’m making is that there are several major differences between no-holds barred competitions and street fights, excluding the techniques that are allowed/disallowed in the competition arena.
It is not techniques that separate the mixed martial artist from the self-defense (Krav Maga) practitioner, it is that the two train to operate in two totally different environments, where the fights follow two totally different formats. It is this that many Krav Maga/self-defense practitioners fail to recognise about the system that they study i.e. it is not designed to be used in no-holds barred competition format and if that type of format is replicated on the street, they will lose to the mixed martial artist there.
I have a female student who is 5’2” and weighs about 110 lbs, she is perfectly capable of defending herself on the street but were she to step in to the UFC, she’d be knocked out or submitted in the first 30 seconds. She is not trained to fight that particular type of fight.
In the UFC both fighters know that there’s going to be a fight (they’ve prepared for it, obviously). They’ve both turned up expecting there to be a fight. On the street, in real life, you rarely know when you’re going to be called on to defend yourself or fight. Fights in real-life, follow misunderstandings, arguments, the misfortune of running into a particularly aggressive person etc. On the street at least one person isn’t prepared to fight. No warning is given that they are going to have to. If my student knew that someone was going to attack her on a particular day at a particular time she would be somewhere else. This is a key difference between the street and the ring.
One of the most important differences between competition and the street is that both participants know the exact moment the fight will start i.e. the referee shouts, ‘fight’ or ‘let’s get it on’ etc. After this has been said, neither one of them will be particularly surprised when the punches start flying. The element of surprise is one of the greatest weapons that a person has in real life combat. I know that my student would last seconds after the fighters were instructed to fight in the ring but I know she’d have a good chance of ‘winning’ if she pre-emptively attacked her opponent whilst he was off-guard talking to her in the hotel lobby before the fight. This isn’t an option in the ring but it is on the street.
This is where the use of hitting soft targets i.e. eyes, throat and groin comes into its own. It’s not the fact that the self-defense/Krav Maga practitioner is denied the use of these things in the ring that restricts their ability to compete in MMA competitions, is that they can’t do so pre-emptively.
The format of a no-holds barred fight, doesn’t allow the opportunity to escape. Self-defense is about engaging and disengaging quickly. My 110 lb student is mad if she tries to stay, fighting to-to-toe, with a 220 lb, athletic, and muscle-packed mma fighter. She needs to defend/make her attack and go. Competitive fighters don’t have the option of running.
In the ring, there is no opportunity to diffuse the fight. Both individuals who step into the ring have agreed to fight. On the street, my student won’t want to fight, she’ll want to do everything she can to avoid it. Standing in the middle of a ring with your arms out-stretched, saying, ‘I don’t want to fight, I’m sure we can sort something out’ etc, isn’t going to go down to well with the crowd. A competitive environment by its very nature restricts the options available to the participants.
Plus, there is no opportunity to just walk away from the fight.
It is important to understand these differences, so that self-defense practitioners don’t walk into, or agree to fights, that go against the format they practice for. If a student of these systems is asked ‘outside’ to fight someone in a pub/bar car park, they should be looking to diffuse the situation or pre-emptively attack their aggressor before they get to the location/agreed time when the fight will take place. If they agree to go outside and square off they have lost every advantage given to them and it is these advantages that enable my 110 lb student to beat an aggressor who is twice her size.
MMA contests are great ways of testing fighting abilities against a trained opponent in a controlled environment, with many of the stressors/dangers of the street removed e.g. knives, multiple opponents etc however the format of the fight is very different to the format of a street encounter (unless a person agrees to fight at a particular place, at a particular time etc). 90% of street self-defense is having the correct mind-set and executing a simple technique(s) and disengaging. If self-defense practitioners try to use their techniques and strategies in another manner e.g. staying engaged with a skilled opponent, they will be looking at disaster.
This is not to say that there aren’t Krav Maga practitioners who can fight or train their skills to be suitable for the UFC however the system was designed for this, it was designed for the average individual, with limited time to train, to be able to survive a street encounter.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
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The Survival Personality
Gershon Ben Keren : 05/09/2007There is only one positive outcome in a street fight and that is surviving it (whilst sustaining the minimal number of injuries possible). I prefer to use the term survival rather than ‘winning’, ‘beating’ or words of a similar nature because survival is a word that looks beyond the fight, and I believe that considering a violent encounter within a bigger picture is the correct way to view a fight e.g. winning means little if a few hours after the fight you die of the injuries you took in order to ‘win’ the fight.
Many individuals when talking of fighting, martial arts and self-defense talk about having a winning/winners mind set. However I think it’s far more appropriate to talk about having a survivor’s mind-set or a survival personality. A winners mind-set can get you killed but a survivor’s, by definition can’t. Survivors always have to live, winners don’t. There are characteristics that both winning and surviving share however the main difference that separates them is that a survivor is prepared to take second place when the situation/conditions/environment dictates, if second place means coming out of the encounter in one piece.
There are people who ‘get this’ and there are people that don’t.
Many people start attending self-defense classes with the notion that being able to defend them self includes being able to administer a beating to anyone who might be ‘stupid’ enough to attack them or abuse them in some way. I remember one student looking at me incredulously when I stated that after blocking/deflecting a knife stab, you should reposition yourself in order to make a hasty retreat, running to the nearest exit. His argument was, surely the deflection had to be followed by an arm lock, knife-disarm or a control? Yes, these are options but why take them when you can run and effectively end the fight at that point i.e. survive the encounter.
In the big picture, any fight is a potential health hazard that should be avoided or dealt with as quickly as possible. Ego, might tell us otherwise but ego is what gets us killed. As one U.S. Marine Corp Commander told Al Siebert (a psychologist specialising in human survival), “The Rambo types are the first to die.”
Under stress, with sweaty palms and a racing heart I would rather trust my legs to run, than my hands and arms to execute a knife disarm against an aggressive opponent intent on killing me. I don’t mind not ‘winning’ the fight I just want to survive it. Its importance to me is a lot less, than being able to spend time with my family, go for a run the next day etc, which for me are things in the ‘big picture’.
If my survival depends on disarming my attacker, then yes I’ll do it but if I can reduce the risks of injury/death by running, backing off i.e. increasing my chances of survival, then that’s what I’ll do first.
Do I have the same attitude against an unarmed attacker? Yes. I have three assumptions I make about an attacker and one of them is that my aggressor(s) is always carrying a superior weapon to mine (If I’m unarmed they have a knife, if I have a knife they have a gun etc). Just because they aren’t showing it to me doesn’t mean they’re not carrying it.
There are several ‘behaviours’ that are common to all survivors and these are key behaviours needed in order to survive violent and potentially violent situations.
Survivor Personality Trait 1: Accepting The Situation Can Change Beyond Your Control
Accepting the potential for a situation to change is a key trait of the survival personality. My initial view of a situation might be that I am facing a smaller, weaker, untrained aggressor however I know that were that person to pull a blade, the odds against me would increase rapidly. I also know that the window of ‘opportunity’ to prevent someone pulling a knife un-expectantly is very small, in fact if they do I will find it very hard to adapt to the situation at the speed that it changes. This is regardless of those things I have in my favour e.g. my training, my athleticism etc. I have to recognise that situations that look well within my control can change rapidly.
Another assumption I always make about an aggressor is that they are not alone: I may think I’m dealing with just one person but that may not be the case. So what if this person’s friends decide to join in the fight? This is a factor within the situation that I have to acknowledge that I can’t control i.e. I can’t stop them joining in, and I know I will have difficulty adapting to this new multiple attacker scenario despite all my training.
When you look/consider an aggressive situation, you need to ask yourself, what you actually know about it and what you are assuming about it. A student of a particular martial art once told me, when recalling a fight he’d been involved in, ‘I never thought he’d have a knife, he was just a school kid’. Some things you know and some things you assume e.g. school kids don’t use knives. Assumptions that are wrong are the surprises that you don’t want to have to face.
In a competitive environment e.g. on the mats, with a referee and with rules (which are there to prevent the situation from changing beyond certain boundaries, meaning there are far fewer assumptions), I can afford to think about ‘winning’: I know what I have to do – I have a simple objective - and can go about doing it without having to worry that the format of the ‘fight’ will suddenly change e.g. If I am competing in Judo, I don’t have to worry about my opponent picking up a chair, inviting his mates to join in, pulling a knife etc plus I know how to end the fight i.e. throw my opponent on his back, submit him, hold him down for 30 seconds etc.
On the street I only know two ways of categorically ending a fight: one is by running away, the other is by putting my attacker(s) into a state of unconsciousness – it might not come to this e.g. they might run away but I have no way of knowing what their response to the fight will be. I cannot assume that they will ‘give up’ voluntarily. Don’t assume that a significant display of force will be enough to end a fight, be prepared to carry the fight to its conclusion. Hope it doesn’t have to come to this but don’t assume otherwise.
Admitting that you can’t control your environment 100% is part of the survival personality. There are too many potential elements and dimensions in a fight for any one person to have full awareness, let alone control of them. Being aware of this is part of a survivors make up. Many people look at what they think they can control and make assumptions about the rest, this is the same as believing you have complete control. Violent encounters are fluid and can flow in any direction.
Incorrect models of situations
One of the reasons we make assumptions and aren’t flexible to changing situations is because we have a view/model of the world that is fixed and incorrect.
One of the bad habits I have to drill out of students is not to lose control of their command of range to a ‘retreating’ opponent. Many students have a habit of almost running to occupy the space that a retreating opponent vacates, often with the consequence of walking on to a punch or strike. They see a person back off and interpret this as a shift in the balance of power and look to consolidate their advantage by attacking the person further. So obsessed do they become with this desire, that they throw all caution to the wind, forgetting to control the distance and range as they follow after them allowing the person they are training with to land easy strikes.
I ‘score’ most of my points when training with students by deliberately backing off and then attacking, when they rush in. The situation may look like one thing but is in fact another. Even when students know this truth, they often still can’t help themselves from rushing in: the fact of somebody backing off is an, ‘emotional bookmark’ to people that signals ‘defeat’, ‘submission’ etc.
Laurence Gonzales, talks about this in his book ‘Deep Survival’:
“Emotional bookmarks, and the ability to keep the right things in working memory played a powerful role in determining who lived and who died in the collapse of the World Trade Centre Towers.”
He talks about how several hundred people followed Roko Camaj a wind washer (who had a key to a door on the roof of one of the twin towers) upwards and into danger rather than making their way down to the ground. People did this because they relied on a powerful past emotional experience. When the World Trade Centre was bombed in 1993 people had been rescued from the roof by helicopter. In 1993 safety was found by going up instead of down. This model of safety, that said going up was the right thing to do was the wrong model to be using on 9/11.
Our adherence to models based on past experiences and emotions is extremely strong. So much so, that even when the facts clearly direct us to a particular conclusion we choose to go another way: the way our model suggests. It may be understandable why people made wrong decisions during the World Trade Centre attacks as nothing like it had been experienced before however other examples are less easy to explain. A psychologist who studies peoples behaviour when lost, recalls, “I saw a man I was hiking with smash his compass with a rock because he thought it was broken. He didn’t believe we were heading in the right direction.” The information his compass was giving was contrary to that which his emotional model was telling him.
Al Siebert, a psychologist specialising in personal survival recalls the experience of Bruno Bettlheim, a Nazi death camp survivor, when he attempted to get treatment for frostbite. Whilst queuing for hospital treatment, the Jewish prisoners discussed how they were going to convince the SS Guards that they needed/deserved to be seen by the camp doctors. Some had decided to come up with a ‘tall story’; others would mention how they had served Germany during the 1st World War, telling of decorations and injuries they’d received whilst serving their country etc. When Bettlheim asked what he was going to say he replied, “I would go by the way the SS man dealt with other Jewish prisoners who had frostbite.” He recalled in his book Survivors, “I doubted how wise it was to follow a preconceived plan, because it was hard to anticipate the reaction of a person you didn’t know.”
Bettlheim made no assumptions about the situation. He recognised that a ‘preconceived plan’ was inflexible and contained assumptions that he wasn’t able to substantiate. He also recognised that having a fixed model of how an SS Guard would react or respond may be incorrect and instead he would look at how the situation changed/developed and base his ‘plan’/strategy on that. Bettlheim had a flexible model and was willing to accept the situation could change beyond his control. Whereas other prisoners tried to control the situation with a preconceived plan e.g. a tall story or a recollection of the war etc based on their belief, “that one SS man was like another, vicious and stupid.” Bettlheim remained flexible and open to the fact that not all Guards were the same.
When his turn in the queue came and he was told by the SS Guard that the only reason a Jew could receive hospital treatment was if they’d had a work accident, Bettlheim replied that he had frostbite and couldn’t work and that all he required was a knife to cut away the dead flesh (as a prisoner he was not permitted a knife). The Guard said that if that was all he wanted then he would cut/pull the dead flesh off for him. When it didn’t come off that easily the Guard waved Bettlheim into the hospital.
Bettlheim had the survivor personality. He understood that fixed plans and models that weren’t open and flexible to change were not successful ones and that making assumptions meant you might miss an opportunity.
When under extreme stress, such as when faced with violence, our adherence to our emotional models, which we understand becomes stronger due to the simple fact that these are far easier to understand and make sense of than the situation we are actually facing. Many of Bettlheim’s fellow prisoners found it easier to maintain a fixed view of an SS Guard and what would and would not work with them, even if experiences prove it incorrect.
My student’s view/model of the world, when seeing someone moving back is incorrect. What they see is a person moving back and their model interprets this situation as them ‘winning’ and their opponent being ‘beaten’ or ‘losing’ – retreating is generally synonymous with defeat though it normally involves turning the back rather than backing off. Their model is incorrect. Having an inflexible model of the world is what gets people killed: it’s not part of the survivor personality.
People all the time adjust the world to fit their model of it. They ignore or misinterpret signs because they don’t conform to their view of things. This can be played/used as a self-defense mechanism or technique against aggressive people intent on causing bodily harm. An overtly aggressive person may view submissive or passive behaviour as a weakness i.e. their model of the world states that a person holding their hands up in front of them and trying to de-escalate the situation is weak and un-willing to fight. This can be a perfect base to launch a pr-emptive strike from, as it will hit/land with total surprise. It can also cause an attacker to question the situation and him or herself, which is a very negative thing for them to do in the middle of a physical confrontation. Fitting the world to an inflexible model of it is beset with potential disasters.
Being open to the situation and not imprinting an inflexible model on it is part of the survivor psychology.
Survivor Personality Trait 2: Taking Responsibility & Control
Another survival personality trait is to accepting the situation and recognise that the only person who can do anything about the situation is your self. Understanding and not questioning the fact that this is happening to you and nobody is coming to help you is maybe the core component of being a survivor.
I have spoken/alluded to this before when talking about ‘motivations to fight’. That is people have either internal or external fight motivators, with some people finding the motivation to fight coming from within themselves e.g. a perceived sense of injustice, the desire to protect third parties, the wish to see children again etc, whilst other people are driven by external motivators such as peer pressure, the desire to appear in control of a situation etc. Internal motivators are personality based whilst external motivators are generally ego based.
I believe it is important to find something that can motivate you to fight when forced to do so. Survivors have something to survive for. This is because they have an appreciation of the big picture and what the purpose of their life is. A good level of self-esteem is the bedrock of self-defense: valuing life and understanding its purpose gives strength from which to draw.
Life is not fair: being selected, as a target for an assault is not fair however it’s the situation being faced. An individual can deny it, get angry at it or accept it and acceptance is the only response upon which positive actions can be built. A confident personality allows acceptance. Acceptance needs to be the very first response a person has when facing a potentially physical altercation as any other response wastes time that could be spent dealing with it. Acceptance does not have to translate as understanding. It is not necessary to understand why a conflict has/is developing, just that it is and that an aggressive individual with the potential to inflict pain/harm is being faced.
Once acceptance of the situation has occurred the process of motivation can begin.
The individuals who don’t survive, whether it be when lost at sea, in the wilderness or when facing violence are those that fail to accept the situation they are in: the individuals who ask, ‘why me?’ or begrudge whatever problem/disaster has befallen them. These individuals waste time and energy questioning what is happening to them rather than accepting and immersing them self in the reality that they are experiencing. Survivors on the other hand can act because they accept their place in the situation and if they have a reason (a motivator) to act, they can act with conviction.
This can be demonstrated by the differing attitudes between two individuals who shared the same life raft after their yacht was capsized. One, Debbie Kiley, came to the following conclusion about her situation, “I had to face facts, we all did, we were on our own...I will help myself, I thought. All I have is myself. I will not fall apart.” This person recognized and accepted her situation understanding that she had to help herself, no one else would. The quote above is her answer to a hope she raised, about being rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. She understood survival was in her hands alone despite the obvious desperate nature of her situation. Whilst she was coming to this conclusion another crewmember, Brad Kavanagh, was sitting on the bow of the boat shouting, “Fuck you, God. Fuck you, you fucking bastard...didn’t anyone tell them we were fucking out here?”
Kavanagh died, Kiley survived. Both had the same physical resources and were in the same situation however Kavanagh lost control of himself. He looked externally for help and by the time it eventually came he was dead. Kiley looked to herself for her own survival.
When facing a situation that can turn violent it has to be understood that the situation can change quickly and dramatically. Whilst lost as sea it may be possible to spend a few hours/days coming to terms with the situation but when facing violence this acceptance needs to be arrived at in seconds, and without question.
When facing violence, the first thought or response must be of a determined acceptance. It may be necessary to say to yourself, ‘this is happening to me and I have to deal with it’, as a verbal cue and a reminder. You must not look to others for help, this is your experience and you must deal with it. This is survival mentality: it is your responsibility to change the situation and only you have the power to do so.
There are individuals who don’t/can’t motivate them selves and these individuals don’t survive. These people may know exactly what to do and may even be trained in how to handle the situation they face and yet once they come face to face with it, they crumble and give up. I know martial artists who have trained for years and yet have allowed themselves to be beaten up badly, barely even defending themselves when attacked on the street. There are counter stories to these, of women who have had no training at all and yet manage to fight off committed rapists and sexual predators.
Search and rescue personnel tell of lost climbers and walkers who died from exposure whilst having the means to provide shelter, warmth and food for them selves. John Leach in, Survival Psychology, writes that, “Victims (i.e. dead people) have been recovered from life rafts with a survival box (containing flares, rations, first aid kits etc) unopened and the necessary contents unused.” As Ken Hill a search and rescue expert states, “some people just give up.”
Giving up is an easy option. There are people who literally walk to their death because it’s easier to walk with someone into a secluded wood than have to deal with them the moment an attack/threat is made. There is a huge difference between actively waiting for a better opportunity and giving up. Deep inside you know that walking into a secluded wood with an armed attacker is not creating a better opportunity.
U.S. survivors of the Baatan death camps said that dying “was as easy as letting go of a rope.” Once a man decided to give up he was normally dead within a few hours.
I know people who have ‘accepted’ the beating they were given, who let them selves be assaulted: it was easier for them to do so than fight back. They would try and find comfort as they were assaulted with the thought, ‘it won’t last forever’. For me this is quite an assumption to make. How do you know what your attackers ultimate intention is? Maybe it is to kill you, to kill your family, to rape you, maybe it is to put you unconscious etcetera, etcetera. You can never truly know what you are giving in to and this is why you can never give up.
These are people who don’t have the motivators to make them change their situation: people whose first response is, ‘why me?’ and ‘this isn’t fair’. Then there are others who without any training, adequate clothing or food survive for lengths of time, which should have killed them. These are survivors: men and women, who accept their situation, understand they have a reason to live and find the means to turn their disaster/problem around.
To survive you must accept the situation and realise it is your situation to deal with.
Survivor Personality Trait 3: Engage In Small Tasks & Significant Actions
One of the methods of survival, which all of these individuals use, is to break down the solution to their problem/situation into manageable/achievable tasks. They don’t try and solve the problem in one foul swoop. If you’re lost at sea in a life raft solving the complete problem is impossible i.e. you can’t suddenly rescue yourself – This was Brad Kavanagh’s conclusion (the yachtsman who died whilst his fellow crewmember, Kiley survived): the problem was too big for him to solve and so he gave up. Instead of being overwhelmed into inaction, survivors set themselves small tasks that they can manage to achieve and which start to give them some control over the situation.
When facing a 220 lb giant with fists like hams and a testosterone level higher than a giraffes navel, the question cannot not be, ‘how do I defeat them?’ Contemplating the problem as having one single complete solution will cause you to internally crumble at the enormity of the task you face. First accept the situation and resolve yourself to changing it, then complete a small task that is part of the solution. This may be as simple as raising your hands up in a pacifying manner and taking a step backwards. This small gesture is helping you direct a situation you have little control of whilst bettering your position in it: by simply stepping back and raising your hands you are in a position where you can better deal with any surprise attack or offer a pre-emptive attack of your own.
Your action is the first small step in putting together a solution that can deal with the complete problem. Breaking the solution down into manageable chunks/tasks is the way to manage an overwhelming problem and start to take control of it.
Physical action is very important in helping to deal with the stress that is felt when facing violence. The body/mind has a tendency to freeze and physical actions help break this response. They can also be used to trigger other positive thoughts and actions.
I tend to align my thoughts to actions to help me prepare myself and get both my mind and body in gear for the coming conflict. As I raise my hands up, forwards, in my pacifying gesture/stance, I say to myself, ‘fingers to the eyes’, when I step back I say to myself, ‘I’m controlling the range’. These are small actions, which put me on the offensive i.e. fingers ready to strike to the eyes and on the defensive i.e. I’m controlling the range, so if you want to hit me, your attack will be dealt with on my terms and on my terms I know I can deal with it.
I now have the key element of surprise. My aggressor doesn’t know that these actions are helping to set me up to change the situation around. I know that a strike to the eyes is the only opportunity I need to start changing things around. Plus I know that his size and strength is irrelevant if I hit here. I also know that a 50% successful eye strike will achieve the effect I want.
I commit myself to small easy tasks and congratulate myself on my ability to complete them. This puts me in a positive frame of mind. This means that I can start to use the resources that my body is giving me e.g. adrenaline.
As I raise my hands, I’ll say/ask, ‘what’s the problem? What’s going on?’ This allows me: a) to possibly de-escalate the situation and b) gives my mind a small task to do i.e. it’s forcing me to mentally engage in the situation. I’m committing myself to taking control of it.
Survivor Personality Trait 4: Avoiding Impulse
Survivors aren’t impulsive. They may take risks and usually do but these are calculated and considered. One of the best ways to avoid impulsiveness is to plan in advance and follow the plan (following the plan is not the same as sticking to a rigid emotional model, as the plan is only there for guidance).
Impulsiveness comes from a need to act based on an uncommitted/unconsidered decision.
I always have a self-defense strategy at hand. I don’t make these up on the spur of the moment because I know that like everyone else I make/choose bad decisions when placed under stress. My strategy is a plan I have worked out in advance that allows an aggressor(s)’s behaviour and actions to dictate how I will respond i.e. if they do this I will do the following, if they do that then I will respond like this etc. This plan does not contain assumptions and is not based on inflexible models of the world. Above all it recognizes and is designed for ever-changing situations.
Because I have planned in advance (another characteristic of the survivor mentality) I don’t have to be impulsive. I may have to take calculated risks but my strategy/plan has already done the calculations for me and I have a step in my plan worked out, should the risk not pay out: sometimes impulses pay-off but usually because we’re lucky.
Survivor Personality Trait 5: Listening To Your Instincts
Amongst the most successful, untrained wilderness survivors by demographic profile, are those aged six and under. When I first read this I was astounded. I have – at the time of writing this - an 18-month-old baby, who can walk/run, open cupboards that he shouldn’t and generally cause a mess but do little that I could see that would contribute to his survival.
However children of this age are gifted in a number of respects: 1) they haven’t developed any emotional/mental models by which to judge the world, so they don’t question the facts 2) their world is what they can see so they don’t run off beyond it, wasting energy i.e. they naturally have to set themselves small tasks and 3) they follow their instincts: if they’re tired they rest, if they’re thirsty they drink, if they sense danger they hide etc, etc.
We, who are older have forgotten to listen to what our body and emotions tell us and instead try and rationalise everything. Despite having a bad feeling, that we can’t put our finger on, in a pub or bar and leaving, we stay arguing to ourselves that there’s nothing we can see that tells us of danger therefore we must be wrong. Later on, it all kicks off and we tell ourselves, ‘I knew that was going to happen, I just felt it.’
Children follow their instincts/emotions and survive; we ignore them and pay the consequences: if we can’t understand something e.g. if it doesn’t match our model, then we discount it. If we look at some of the ‘stupid’ things we say to ourselves in everyday life this starts to become apparent. How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I don’t understand why I’m hungry I only ate an hour ago’? My son never asks this question, for him the important thing is that he’s hungry, the ‘why’ is irrelevant. He listens to what his body and senses tell him and then responds.
If we feel something is wrong it’s because it’s wrong. Years of evolution have taught us to take in a scene and process the many pieces of information it contains (subconsciously) and give us an emotion as the outcome. We don’t need to consciously process all the pieces to understand why we have the emotion we just need to recognise the emotion and act upon.
We talk about, ‘the quick and the dead’: the quick are those that listen to their emotions and the dead are those who don’t.
Survivors are the quick. Non-survivors are the dead.
Survivor Personality Trait 6: Staying Calm
This is probably the number one personality trait of the survivor. I have however left it to last as I believe it can only be made sense of, when all of the above traits are put together. Only when an individual understands that they: should listen to their instincts, not act impulsively because they already have a plan/strategy, only undertake small actions and tasks, remain open and flexible to the situation and recognise it can change, look internally for solutions etc, can they start to realise that it’s possible to remain calm.
Calmness in the face of violence is not the indifferent Zen Calmness that many martial arts promote. If you approach a violent situation with the same degree of emotion as you would do when going to the shops to buy a paper you’re either a psychopath or you’ve misread the situation entirely. There is a place for fear in this calmness however its place remains firmly under control.
Fear is an enabler. The physical sensations that accompany the feeling of fear are indicators that the body is preparing a physical response to the situation it faces. The conscious response to these feelings can be one of panic or control. All feelings can be controlled and fear is just another feeling that needs to be reined in and positively channelled.
It’s very hard to do this by just telling yourself to ‘calm down’. Everything about you wants to engage in an emotional release. Rather than trying to suppress this it should be given a positive release. This is where you engage in small tasks. You allow your body to make a physical response: raise the hands up in a non-aggressive fashion and take a step back. Consciously engage in the situation by asking the aggressor, ‘what’s the problem?’ etc. These are activities, things to do, which can be used to provide a release for the emotion of fear.
This is what enables you to stay calm. You don’t have to panic because you’re prepared to deal with the situation. Panic, wastes energy: panic is an uncontrolled release of the body’s reaction to fear. By releasing the pent-up energies that accompany fear through positive actions the feelings of fear can be controlled. This is what allows the mind to be calm.
Violent situations contain an overload of information and the brain needs to be freed up to start processing it: calmness provides the right state for this to happen. By directing the brains processing e.g. by asking an aggressor what the problem is, you can slow down and channel the information overload.
Calmness is achieved through action.
Conclusion
Being a survivor means that you live, it means that you value the big picture and want to experience everything that it contains. A ‘winner’ is prepared to sacrifice the whole in order to succeed in a part. To me, winning a fight means little, if the consequences of the fight restrict my ability to enjoy the rest of my life.
Survivors aren’t born they’re created. We all have the ability to develop the traits that will give us this personality profile. A profile, which I believe is healthy for everyday life, and not just for self-defense.
A self-defense mentality etc is not just something you practice in a class or sterile environment but is something defined by who you are. If you value your life and the things it contains, you will be willing to defend them. However if you don’t e.g. you have low self-esteem, little to live for etc, the survivor/self-defense mind-set will always be out of your reach.
For some people trying to develop a survival mentality will seem like settling for second best: they would rather have a ‘winners’ mentality. However I would point out that, survivors are not people who settle for second best but individuals who want to ‘win’ in the big game, not the little games. These are the people who came out of Auschwitz and Buchenwald alive because they wanted to enjoy their lives, these are the individuals that survived Baatan because they wanted to see their families again, because they weren’t prepared to let someone take something away from them that they valued i.e. their lives.
A survivor personality is a winning personality that longs to win in the long-term, within the big picture and not one that looks only to succeed within individual moments.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
< Read The Previous Article On Fight Motivators :: Return To Main Site
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Motivating Yourself To Fight
Gershon Ben Keren : 01/09/2007As I have stated self defense and self-protection begin with self worth: if you don’t value yourself you will deem yourself to have anything worth defending or protecting. Some individuals cannot motivate themselves to adequately defend an attack against them but can do so if an attack is made against a third person that they value. There have been several reports of women who failed to defend themselves but who caused an attacker/predator to turn and run when their child/children were threatened. More often than not these women had no formal self-defense/martial arts training (attitude is far more important when it comes to self defense than techniques) but were able to prevent an attacker hurting their children due to the sheer intensity of the resistance they put up on their child’s behalf. However in many cases they were not able to ‘tap into’ this aggression when they themselves were assaulted as part of the attack.
It can be seen that throughout nature, mothers will defend their offspring against predators, with a ferocity that few males can demonstrate. They will react without thinking when their children or cubs are threatened or attacked but be far more cautious or less driven when an attack is made against them self. This is not to say that they don’t value themselves at all (although this could be the case) just that they value their offspring more. If women could tap into this drive to protect others when they themselves are threatened, I believe there would be few men, if any, who could stand up against them and if men could somehow replicate this type of aggression they would never have to fear another violent aggressor.
Although self-worth is the foundation for self-defense it is important for an individual to understand exactly what motivates them to fight e.g. is the injustice of being attacked, is it the thought of possibly being killed and not seeing their children etc. Just as a mother is motivated to fight by the need to prevent her children being hurt, every individual needs to understand what will motivate them to fight and defend them self.
Understanding this will also, stop you walking into a fight that could be prevented e.g. if you are motivated to fight by an assault on your ego, then by recognising that this is a fight motivator for you, you will have the ability to hold it in check and walk away – if this is an appropriate choice in the situation.
For some people it will be necessary for the first time to discover the things, feelings and emotions that will prompt them to defend themselves/engage in a fight. These might need to be conditioned and developed in some people to ensure that they have the strength to overcome and/or harness the fear that is felt whilst under the stress of a real confrontation.
Fight motivators fall into two basic categories: those that are internal and those that are external. An internal motivator is one, which is driven by an understanding of your personality e.g. you are committed to defending yourself because you will not accept that another person will dominate you in such a way. An external motivator is one that is derived from the situation and environment. This could be something as simple as not wanting to appear weak when dealing with an aggressor in front of a group of friends e.g. peer pressure etc. The same situation though may also prompt an internal motivator e.g. if an individual(s) is being aggressive to the group as a whole, there may well be an internal motivation to fight driven by the feeling of the need to protect the group.
It is worth pointing out that a motivator to fight may also be the same motivator that causes you to avoid the fight. All fights should be engaged in with reluctance and if a situation can be diffused or de-escalated it should be however it must be recognised that there are times when fighting/defending yourself is the only available option. Since becoming a father, I have a strong reason not to fight i.e. I want to avoid serious injury or potential death (one of the assumptions I always make about a person I’m going to fight is that they’re armed) as I want to see my son grow up knowing me as I am now i.e. 100% able bodied. The same thing that motivates me to avoid fighting, is also one of the things that motivates me to be 100% committed when fighting i.e. if I believe someone is attempting to cause me harm and they can’t be talked down then I will do whatever is necessary to survive the fight in order to see and enjoy my son. An assault on me is basically an assault on my family.
If I have to fight then I want a good reason to do so and I want a reason that is going to make me committed to my actions. I recognise that being in a fight is a serious business with potentially serious consequences and so if I have to fight it will be with a very good reason in mind. A reason that makes me more committed to the fight than my attacker.
All parties engaged in a fight have a vested interest in it. I need to make sure my interest means more to me than the other person(s). This is how you survive the encounter.
Survival has to the way you think about the fight. This may seem a non-heroic way to think however as I like to state, survivors have to live whereas heroes don’t: heroes can die. My life is precious to me. I value it highly. I know it is precious to others e.g. my wife and child. Because of this it is worth protecting, defending and fighting for. This is one of my strongest motivators when I have to fight. An attacker who assaults me is attacking all of this and to me this is totally unacceptable. My property is secondary and not worth the possible risks associated with defending it. If a mugger with a knife wants my wallet my wallet he/she can have it. If the same mugger is still holding the knife at my throat after I’ve given them my wallet, then they’re in for a fight as they’re now putting me and what I value at risk.
Each person needs to find what they’re motivation to fight is. They need to discover what they value about themselves and understand when an aggressor questions this. This is their motivation to be committed to the fight, should it be unavoidable. If drawn into a fight you need to invest heavily in it, this is the only way to survive.
An army that is unsure about it’s goal and not committed to it’s cause will fail against an army who knows why it’s doing what it’s doing. There is no room or time for questions and doubt during a fight. If you can cause your aggressor to question and doubt what they are doing then the fight advantage becomes yours. Like the mother defending her child you must invest more in the fight than the person committing the assault.
This attitude is more important than any techniques you can learn. Without it techniques become suitable only for the clinical environment of the dojo or training hall. A street fight should involve passion and aggression not Zen calmness. There are far too many martial artists who believe they can rely solely on technique and leave their mindset to sort it self out. These are the individuals who are baffled, when they can’t get what they know to work.
The right motivation(s) is the key to developing/triggering the aggression that is needed to survive real life assaults.
Regards
Gershon
P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page
< Read The Previous Article On A fear of Violence :: Return To Main Site
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